Modes of modernistic thinking are now easier for me to detect. These presume a uniformity of the ground of experience, such that we are all presumed to be experiencing the same sorts of things. Thus someone else can easily put themselves in your shoes and tell you what you could have done better. They can understand immediately -- for they are also, (presumably), in the position of experiencing exactly the same sorts of things, and making better decisions.
These days if someone addresses me, "I know who you are and what you think, only in your shoes I would have done much better!", I bid them sayonara. Obviously, there is something that they don't know about me, if they think that doing what they would do would have been the better choice for me. They may fail to understand my circumstances sufficiently, or have other excuses, but clearly they are giving themselves a pat on the back at my expense.
It devolves into a stupid mechanism of Papa knows best, but real knowledge isn't bought and sold that easily.
These days if someone addresses me, "I know who you are and what you think, only in your shoes I would have done much better!", I bid them sayonara. Obviously, there is something that they don't know about me, if they think that doing what they would do would have been the better choice for me. They may fail to understand my circumstances sufficiently, or have other excuses, but clearly they are giving themselves a pat on the back at my expense.
It devolves into a stupid mechanism of Papa knows best, but real knowledge isn't bought and sold that easily.
1 comment:
Yes - modernism universalizes and calls that scientific, and therefore true. (This is of course what is wrong with Habermas, Gadamer, etc.)
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